Economy

...... to stores that had the products you needed. It took a long time to get used to this phrase.....
"We don't have that in stock, but we can have it here in two weeks IF we order it today."

We soon learned what the ordering day was for the local vendors we used. We also learned just to plan to take the 140-mile round trip to the nearest large retail market.

That didn't always work, either. This phrase was common also. "We just sold the last one yesterday."
We eventually worked out an arrangement with the leading stores we frequented. We would ask them to hold one for us, and we would be there the following weekend to pick it up.

All these things were fine, except we had to factor in the cost of gas. And in the earlier year, babysitters for the day.

Then along came Amazon. Then, Amazon Prime.

We would have struggled to get through Covid if we didn't just didn't rely on Amazon. It was unsafe to shop in most of our local stores because we also moved to a region packed with Covid deniers. No vacs, no masks because Fox told them it was all a hoax.

For the most part, we do try local vendors FIRST but found that Covid disrupted their supply lines.